Tate.
Recognition settles in, followed by a measured sense of relief. Emmy ran to someone she trusts. Someone safe. As far as my world goes, that’s the best outcome she could have chosen.
She’ll be safe.
For now.
I switch to another app, the one I swore I’d never need. The screen loads, and there it is: a blinking blue dot, steady and alive, parked at Tate’s townhouse.
More calm washes through me.
I watch the dot pulse for several long moments. Breathing. Thinking. Planning.
Emmy may have slipped through my fingers today, but it won’t last. She was never meant to disappear from my life, only to orbit closer, deeper, until escape was no longer an illusion she could afford.
She is mine.
And there is nowhere on this earth she can hide that I won’t find her.
I set my phone down and turn towards the bathroom, already shedding the remnants of softness from my thoughts.
I spend the day constructing contingencies in my head, dismantling them just as quickly. Every option leads back to the same problem: myfather and his deadline. I need time. I need silence. Most of all, I need Emmy untouched by his attention.
He cannot know she carries a fragment of his secret.
I have Keys run the hospital records again, deeper this time. Every database. Every archive. Anything tied to Liam. The result is the same as before.
Nothing.
No admission. No discharge. No death certificate. No report. No autopsy.
It’s as if he never existed at all.
But he did.
And the absence screams louder than any evidence ever could. My father erased him, methodically, completely. Liam didn’t disappear by chance. He was removed.
After I asked Jaxon to stall him, I already knew the answer before it came. My father doesn’t detour. He doesn’t delay. And he certainly doesn’t forgive interference. Jaxon tried, I’ll give him that, but there is no redirecting a man like him.
Which means there is only one path left.
I have to confront him.
I have to let him move first.
My father is ruthless, unpredictable by design, but right now, he’s also unsettled. Paranoid. A man guarding a secret is always careless in ways he doesn’t anticipate. If I let him reveal his hand, if I force him to believe he’s still in control, I might be able to turn the board before he realises the game has changed.
Until then, I shift every available resource toward one purpose.
Emmy.
Eyes in the shadows. Silent watchers. Distance that looks like abandonment but isn’t. I don’t need her to know she’s protected, I just need her alive.
She ran from me believing she was escaping the danger.
What she doesn’t understand, what I will make sure she never has to, is that the real threat isn’t me.
And if my father comes for her…
